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As a big, burly lineman on the Cal football team, Richard Fisher can be fairly characterized as a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, hold the meat. Please, hold the meat.

Fisher, 6-foot-2 and 280 pounds, is a rarity in college football: an offensive lineman who is also a vegetarian. Put him and his fellow O-line veggies around the country in the same room and it wouldn't take long to call roll.

"People ask if I'll ever eat meat. Someday, maybe," Fisher said. "But I worry about what might happen to my intestines the day after. I'm not sure it would be a good experience."

When fellow guard Brian Schwenke was asked if he could function as a vegetarian, he recoiled in horror. "I'd die," he said.

As for Fisher, a lacto-ovo vegetarian, he's living quite nicely on a diet of milk, cheese, eggs, pasta, beans, fruit, pizza (remember, hold the meat), peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, protein shakes, ice cream and, of course, vegetables. Stir-fry dishes with eggs is a favorite, as is pizza, particularly from the Cheeseboard in Berkeley.

Fisher, a senior from the Santa Cruz Mountains hamlet of Ben Lomond, has been a vegetarian longer than he can remember. A line in Fisher's bio in the media guide is startling: "has been a vegetarian since he was a toddler."

For that he can thank his progressive parents, Eric and Brett Fisher. They embraced a vegetarian lifestyle years ago and raised three no-meat children. "My parents originally ate meat," Fisher said. "They went to a Tony Robbins seminar and got the global food perspective. They were into working out and being healthy. They actually started out vegan, so I was a vegan for a couple years. That was really hard to get protein, especially growing up, so they said, OK, we can eat dairy."

I wouldn't go that far, mountain, but his diet is not healthy, that's for sure. He should settle for weighing 230 lbs, and fast as quick silver. That would get the football job done. He could be just as strong at that weight,as at 280. He'd need far fewer calories, so he wouldn't have to eat so much high fat food.